Archive for the ‘Board Meeting’ Category

Let’s pledge that children come first at Sac City Unified.
Let’s promise to put a child’s best interest at the heart of every decision we make.
Let’s stand up together.
What would happen?

Dear Board Members:

For your consideration tonight and this coming school year I would like to offer an alternative vision from my home town. I have many nieces and nephews in San Diego so I continue to follow education where I began public school teaching. This was during the Alan Bersin era of top down change.

Why San Diego? What is it about the battles here that proved important for you in illustrating a larger point about school reform?
San Diego was a very important district in the current reform narrative because it was the first big district to apply the top-down approach. The leadership knew exactly what teachers should be doing, and they required compliance. Its “take-no-prisoners” approach was subsequently copied by Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C.
…
Conflict is a sign of failed leadership in education. When one is running a prison system, it is important to have a tough, top-down style, because you can’t take chances. But in education, the leadership must rely on the teachers to do the daily work. If the leadership does not win their willing, even enthusiastic, support, then the reforms will stall. Teachers are educated adults; they have experience with students. They don’t like to be treated like children. They need to feel respected.

There are plenty of problems in San Diego but I do think that the board majority there (which also operates with a policy governance model) can provide examples that are worth your consideration.

Below is an excerpt from the March annual State of the District speech by the board president. I urge you to consider placing the vision of community-driven change ahead of chief-driven change:

“The competing vision for reform comes from what I would characterize as the community model. This vision sees change as fundamentally coming from those closest to kids – teachers, parents, principals, support staff at the school such as paraeducators, counselors, librarians and office staff, community volunteers and even students themselves. The community model puts its faith in strong relationships built between people within a school community, striving for what University of Chicago professors Anthony Bryk and Barbara Schneider term ‘Trust in Schools.’ ” (SDUSD President)

These executives (most who have never taught in a classroom or been a principal) make the rounds throughout the countries’ school systems while changing job titles and descriptions. It’s a smorgasboard of CEO’s. Raymond was a chief accountability officer before he was hired in Sacramento.

The ultimate goal is to run the school system like a corporation –SCUSD teachers will have continued pressure to “teach the test” and improve API scores — data will be relentlessly tracked and tied to performance by the chief accountability officer.

This reform leads to what education historian Diane Ravitch calls a huge mistake:

Teachers — not just union leaders — are unhappy, frustrated, and demoralized. So are parents, because they don’t like the high-stakes testing regime either. They don’t like that their children are losing time for the arts, science, history, geography, physical education, foreign languages, and everything that is not tested. They may not be well-informed, yet they know that their children are missing out on a good education.

I want to make sure I do my best to convey the general sense and mood as
McClatchy teachers gave their approval to donate to the District over $1,000
annually for the next two years to fund elementary class-size reduction and
to establish a retiree benefit trust.

Teachers voted with no guarantee that the counselors we so desperately
need at the middle and high school levels will return. And they did
so without any word whether pink-slipped high school teachers would be
back in the classrooms next year. One teacher called his vote a “leap of
faith” that the Board will finally “get it” and start paying attention to
the budget and actual spending, rather than just approve what the District
staff presents.

Another, a teacher with teens soon to start college, had tears in her
eyes as she voted (actually, quite a few did). She told me that with her
husband furloughed and with the astonishing increases in the price of
tuition she had no idea what she was going to do about her kids’
college future. This agreement, she said, would essentially wipe away
what little discretionary income her family had left each month. (She
noted too, as did several others, that at least with furloughs they could
spend the day off at home. A bit of gallows humor, perhaps, in a
terrible situation.) Nevertheless, she told me she voted for it, as did
over 90% of the McClatchy staff.

Most concerning to me, however, was the overall sense of skepticism
expressed that Superintendent Raymond and the members of the Board of
Trustees truly appreciate that the teachers have agreed to make a
significant financial sacrifice in order to repudiate the “race to the
bottom” mentality others were so quick to embrace: that furloughs (teaching
fewer days!) in any way, shape or form are consistent with “putting kids
first.”

Now that the agreement has been ratified, the District, thanks in large part
to its teachers, should be celebrated far and wide as a place where the
school year was kept intact, students and families were not turned away
through furloughs, and the true education mission was preserved.

It is now time to ask SCUSD board members to step up and match the
commitment shown by District teachers to keep cuts as far away from the kids
as possible.

Over the past year, I have joined others, including Board Member
Rodriguez, in advocating for a “line-by-line” budget review public work shop
in order to ensure that all dollars budgeted and spent are done so with
priority concerns–our kids’ classroom learning experience–in mind.

This is a plea to create such a process.

It will help re-assure teachers, parents and the community, at this
crucial time when so many are sacrificing so much, that the District Board
of Trustees are determined to leave no stone unturned to find ways to reduce
the cuts to teaching and support staff going forward. We might even
discover a way to fully fund our middle and high school counselors and
restore some reality to the oft-stated principle that we believe in
nurturing a college-going culture in this district.

Last April, citizens tried to participate in the budget process by shining a light right out in front for all board members to see — they balanced the numbers and kept the cuts out of the classroom. The presentation included charts, graphs and numbers.

These citizens, interested in tying spending to student outcomes, are still diligently working. They cannot do it alone.

Last year, The Observer wrote:

Grimes, Houseman, Bell, Rodriguez, Arroyo, Kennedy and Terry can unite as a board to provide clear, direct instructions to management to come back … (sic) with different and positive options. This board can confirm for us their commitment to policy governance.

Teachers are being asked to sacrifice through contract votes. What is the board being asked to sacrifice? A parcel tax? How about asking administration to give you accountability through real numbers that represent real dollars.

SCUSD trustees voted Thursday evening to resubmit the Race to the Top application as the state seeks to be one of 10 selected for $3 billion in second-round funding. Finalists will be announced in the fall.

Here is the most recent letter from Jonathan Raymond to pink-slipped employees:

March 22, 2010

Dear Colleague:

At Thursday night’s Board meeting, I was thrilled to announce that we plan to send letters out on Monday that will rescind approximately 170 of the layoff notices that were sent out last week. We hope, in the coming weeks, to rescind even more. These rescissions mark a step in the right direction but make no mistake – we still have a long way to go. I understand that this process can be confusing at times and that it can be laden with tremendous anxiety and upset, and my staff and I are available to answer any questions you might have about the status of the process.

The unfortunate truth is that there is no way to avoid some layoffs to balance our fiscal house. The exact number that will be needed is undetermined at this time, but I can tell you that I am doing everything in my power to have as few people as possible be impacted.

It is crucial that, even while we face the types of extraordinary challenges that we do today, we never stop searching for ways to innovate and improve our children’s education. It is with this notion in mind that we introduced our “Priority Schools” Initiative earlier this week. By focusing on bringing the best staffs and most resources to these six underperforming schools, we will be able to create a blueprint for the success of the other schools in our district. Change at these sites will not come easy. In fact, it will require us all to take a long, hard look at the way we go about educating our children at these sites and in general. It will also require us to identify where our strengths are and have the courage to acknowledge our weaknesses. Cleary, the status quo has not been working for our children and while I am not interested in making change for the sake of change, we MUST be willing take a step back and examine even the most fundamental aspects of how we operate.

As we look at new ideas, innovative approaches and creative strategies, it is important that we leave no stone unturned and no opportunity unexplored. That is the basis of the Teach for America proposal. This is obviously a topic that has inspired a lot feedback from many around our district and the full-house at Thursday’s Board meeting is a testament to that. I truly appreciate and embrace an intelligent and mature dialogue about this – and every – issue. We won’t all agree on every idea that may lead to improving the quality of our children’s education, but we should be able to agree that we need to work together to solve our problems.

As this process unfolds, I will continue to seek out feedback from all of you regarding where we are, how we got here and, most importantly, where we can go from here. You have a continuing commitment from me to be open and transparent in this process and I ask that you join me in working collaboratively – not antagonistically – to help us all achieve our ultimate goal: the best education for our children that we can possibly provide.